C M Kornbluth - Everybody Knows Joe.pdf

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Everybody Knows Joe
C. M.Kornbluth
Everybody Knows Joe
JOB HAD QUITE A DAY for himself Thursday, and as usual I had to tag along. If I had a right arm to
give, I'd give it for a day off now and then. Like on Thursday. On Thursday he really outdid himself.
He woke up in the hotel room and had a shower. Hewasnt going to shave until I told him be looked like
a bum. So he shaved and then he stood for a whole minute admiring his beauty in the mirror, forgetting
whose idea it was in the first place.
So down to the coffee shop for breakfast A hard-working man needs a good breakfast So getting ready
for abackbreak-ing day of copying references at the library, he had tomato juice, two fried eggs, three
sausages, a sugared doughnut, and coffee—with cream and sugar.
 
He couldn't work that off his pot in a week of ditch-digging under a July sun, but a hard-working man
needs a good breakfast. I was too disgusted to argue with him. He's hopeless when he smells that
short-order smell of smoking grease, frying bacon and coffee.
He wanted to take a taxi to the library—eight blocks!
"Walk, you jerk!" I told him. He started to mumble about
pullingdown six hundred bucks for this week's work and then he must have thought I was going to
mention the high-calorybreakfast.To him that's hitting below the belt. He thinks he's an unfortunate man
with an affliction—about twenty pounds of it. He walked and arrived at the library glowing with virtue.
Making out his slip at the newspaper room he blandly put down next to firm—The Griffin Press,
Inc.—when he knew as well as I did that he was a free lance and hadn't even got a definite assignment
fromGriffin.
There's a line on the slip where you put down reason for consulting files (please be specific). It's a shame
to cramp Joe's style to just one line after you pitch him an essay-type question like that. He squeezed in,
Preparation of article on year in biochemistry for Griffin Pr.Encyc . 1952Yrbk., and handed it with a
flourish to the librarian.
The librarian, a nice old man, was polite to him, which is usually a mistake with Joe. After he finished
telling the librarian how his microfilm files ought to be organized and how they ought to switch from
microfilm tomicrocard and how in spite of everything the New York Public Library wasn't such a bad
place to research, he got down to work.
He's pretty harmless when he's working—it's one of the things thatkeeps me from cutting his throat. With
anoonbreak for apple pie and coffee he transcribed about a hundred entries onto his cards, mopping up
the year in biochemistry nicely. He swaggered down the library steps, feeling like Herman Melville after
finishing Moby Dick.
"Don't be so smug," I told him. "You still have to write the piece. And they still have to buy it"
 
"A detail," he said grandly."Just journalism. I can do it with my eyes shut."
Just journalism.Somehow his three months of running copy for the A.P. before the war has made him an
Ed Leahy.
"When are you going to do it with your eyes . . . ?" I began but it wasn't any use. He began telling me
about howGautama Buddha didn't break with the world until he was 29 and Mohammed didn't announce
that he was a prophet until he was 30, so why couldn't he one of these days suddenly bust loose with a
new revelation or something and set the world on its ear? What it boiled down to was he didn't think he'd
write the article tonight
He postponedbis break with the world long enough to have
aham and cheese on rye and more coffee at an automat and then phoned Maggie. She was available as
usual. She said as usual, "Well then, why don't you just drop by and we'll spend a quiet evening with
some records?"
As usual he thought that would be fine since he was so beat after a hard day. As usual I told him,
"You're a louse, Joe. You know all she wants is a husband and you know it isn't going to be you, so why
don't you let go of the girl so she can find somebody who means business?"
The usual answers rolled out automatically and we got that out of the way.
Maybe Maggie isn't very bright but she seemed glad to see him. She's shooting for her Doctorate in
sociology at N.Y.U., she does part-time case work for the city,she has one of those three-room
Greenwich Villageapartments with dyed burlap drapes and studio couches and home-made mobiles. She
thinks writing is something holy and Joe's careful not to tell her different
They drank somerhine wine and seltzer while Joe talked about the day's work as though he'd won the
Nobelprize for biochemistry. He got downright brutal about Maggie being mixed up in such an
approximateunquantitative excuse for a science as sociology and she apologized humbly and eventually
he forgave her.Big-hearted Joe.
 
But he wasn't so fried that he had to start talking about a man wanting to settle down—"not this year but
maybe next Thirty's a dividing point that makes you stop and wonder what you really want and what
youVe really got out of life, Maggiedarlin '." It was as good as telling her that she should be a good girl
and continue to keep open house for him and maybe some day... maybe.
As I said, maybe Maggie isn't very brightBut as I also said, Thursday was the day Joe picked to outdo
himself.
"Joe," she said with this look on her face, "I got a new LP of the Brahms Serenade Number One. It's on
top of the stack. Would you tell me what you think of it?"
So he put it on and they sat sippingrhine wine and seltzer and he turned it over and they sat sippingrhine
wine and seltzer until both sides were played. And she kept watching him. Not adoringly.
"Well," she asked with this new look, "what did you thinkofitr
He told her, of course. There was some comment on
Brahms' architectonics and his resurrection of the contrapuntal style.Because he'd sneaked a look at the
record's envelope he was able to spend a couple of minutes on Brahms' debt to Haydn and the young
Beethoven in the fifth movement (allegro, D Major) and the gay rondo of the—
"Joe," she said, not looking at him. "Joe," she said, "I got that record at one hell of a discount down the
street. It's a wrong pressing. Somehow the first side is the first half of the Serenade but the second half is
Schumann's Symphonic Studies Opus Thirteen. Somebody noticed it when they played it in a booth. But
I guess you didn't notice it."
"Get out of this one,braino ," I told him.
He got up and said in a strangled voice, "And I thought you were my friend. I suppose 111 never learn."
He walked out
 
I supposehe neverwiB .
God help me, I ought to know.
 

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